We live in a country that uses religion to divide and harass. Can you find a single festival that doesn't cause pollution of some sort?
Huranga is a game played between men and women a day after Holi in which men drench women with colours and the latter tear off the clothes of the men. Pic/AFP
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There were three fires outside my building for Holi this year. They were lit less than 100 metres apart, by different groups of people who, I presume, had spent a long time struggling to understand the concept of group celebrations. There was a rivalry of sorts at play, I'm told, which made no sense because the only thing they could beat each other at was which of their members would suffer from a respiratory ailment sooner than the rest. A coconut tree caught fire around midnight, soon after one of the fires was lit, prompting members of one group of revellers to try and obtain water from a building terrace before burning leaves consumed their homes. It looked like a farcical scene from a comedy, except that the fire, smoke, and risk to life and property were all very real.
On the morning of the festival, all that remained were heaps of ashes surrounded by drunk men dancing to item numbers from Bollywood films. They were joined by a ragtag bunch of other inebriated men who proceeded to add to the celebrations by playing more film songs badly. This continued until 4 pm, despite the fact that most of the men had collapsed and were no longer capable of thrusting their pelvises obscenely. There were no women in sight anywhere, presumably because they were in hiding. After all, ours is a country where, as the University of Delhi recently showed, festivals aren't exactly female-friendly. Two women's dormitories in the capital were reportedly locked down during the festival, to protect undergraduate women from street harassment.
Think about this for a minute. Why are so many of our festivals - all of which supposedly exist to praise some God or the other, or celebrate something that was born of a spiritual need - now events that fill so many groups of people with terror? Why do so many of these occasions end up leaving women, animals and senior citizens with a bad taste in their mouths?
I don't have a problem with Holi, or any festival, as long as I am not forced to participate or am affected in any way. Unfortunately, we live in a country that uses religion as a means to divide and harass. It is increasingly hard to find a single festival that doesn't cause air, water or noise pollution of some sort. It is increasingly hard for people who don't want to participate in these noisy, largely illegal gatherings, to find recourse from any legal authority either, simply because even the police are compelled to sit back and watch. Political parties do everything they can to ignore the spiritual aspect of any celebration and focus on the monetary bit, in the hope of scoring brownie points.
It's interesting how they never attempt to score these points by doing something useful, like giving us decent roads.
I stood by my window and watched as flames rose into the air that night, wondering how many of my drunk neighbours knew what they were doing or why they were doing it. I wondered where it was written that a God or Goddess would be honoured only by the playing of film songs. Where did it say that item numbers on the street were mandatory for a festival to be complete? When did this happen to us and how did we allow it?
The police in Delhi reportedly posted around 25,000 officers around the city to prevent hooliganism during last week's festivities. That means nearly 25,000 police officers were deployed to maintain law and order just to ensure that women were not being harassed under the guise of a religious event. If that isn't saddening, I'm not sure what is. I understood that fear though, because I could see it where I live too. Women were simply afraid of participating in these festivals in public, without adequate security. Is this not a sad comment on the inability of our countrymen to behave?
There's a common refrain bandied about whenever one confronts hooligans on most Indian streets. "Don't be offended; it's Holi," they say, as if that makes it perfectly okay for them to make the lives of everyone in their neighbourhood miserable, or do what they like to women while completely ignoring the notion of consent. We tend to let this go because, we tell ourselves, it happens just once a year. Why is that though? Why can't we understand that, for so many women, seniors and animals, even once a year is too much?
When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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